“Failure is not the outcome; failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.” ~ Sara Blakely, Spanx Founder and CEO
There is tremendous value in embracing your mistakes and learning invaluable lessons from them. Failure is nothing to be afraid of.
Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, said that as a child, her father encouraged failure and as would pose an unusual question to her and her brother over dinner: “How did you fail this week?”
“He encouraged us to fail, and not to be afraid of it,” she told me. “If we didn’t have something to tell him that week, he would be disappointed.”
When Blakely tried out for the cheerleading squad and was “horrible and didn’t make it,” he high-fived her. When she revealed that she lost her campaign for senior class president, he told her that was amazing.
Blakely says she learned to find her hidden gifts in moments of disappointment or error. Instead of locking up in fear when things go wrong, she says people must find the beauty in these moments.
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